Caution: High Voltage
by Numair's Lover
Summary: All it took was one stormy night and his life changed forever....


**Alrighty, well this is just a little something that popped into my head out of nowhere and I thought hey what the heck. Just a little warning, I wrote it very fast so grammar, spelling, and all that jazz might not be the greatest. And, i threw it together without any thought, so there is another warning... actually, i find this story very hilarious... you can judge it yourself... Anyway, enjoy!**

Numair glanced down, looking over his broken and weakened body. How could have the past events that have taken place send his body and soul into such turmoil? He raked his mind trying to find answers, but he surprised himself by drawing blank every time he thought. Numair Salmalin, Black Robe of Tortall, one of the smartest men in the realm, for once could not explain what was happening, or happened to him. He gazed towards the sky with sorrow and confusion embedded within his shadowy eyes. So was this was the end for him? So be it.

_It was the middle of the night, and a storm was fast approaching. Numair snuck quietly out of the rooms he shared with Daine, very eager to test his new working and idea about using the energy from lightening and converting it into usable stored energy. _

"Numair?"

"Numairrrr!"

"Salmalin where are you?"

Voices. Yes, voices, that's what they had to have been. Those enchanting sounds wrapped his mind up into a comforting embrace and delivered it back to his body. Numair could feel his senses becoming sharper each passing second, and soon his vision was back in focus, and he could hear nearby footsteps approaching him. They were gradually getting closer, and soon he could barely make out the assortment of workboots and shins that were gathered around him.

"Mithros bless what happened to him?"

"I-I-It looks as if he got thrown into a frying pan..."

"Oh Gods Numair what have you done to yourself this time?"

_He stepped out into the rain and walked out into the courtyard, anxious to test this new concept. He was drenched and shivering within seconds of being outside, and soon felt quite miserable, but sacrifices of comfort must be made for great new scientific discoveries._

Daine, Onua, Alanna, and George were all congregated around Numair. All four of them wore bewildered, and horrified looks on their faces as they gazed down at their friend. Deep crimson scorches decorated his lanky frame, and the occasional muscle in his arms and legs twitched and spasmed. He had a pool of blood flowing out of his left ear, and his face was very swollen and red. They could all hear his shallow breathing laboring on, and his eyelids flickered and squinted occasionally as if he was staring straight into a bright light.

_He stood in place, determined to get this right the first time so he could celebrate his new achievement in the comfort of his rooms wearing dry clothes and being warmed by the fire. Wiping the continuous flow of water out of his eyes, Numair readied the spell and looked across the horizon, waiting for the next illuminating bolt of electricity to strike from above._

Numair's breathing suddenly cut short, and his heart spontaneously raced as if he was running a marathon. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and soon his limbs began violently shaking and fluttering all over the place. Completely caught off guard, the fellow tortallans that had found him rushed to the aid of the poor siezuring Numair. George pinned him by the shoulders, taking each blow that was given, careful trying not to dislocate his shoulders. Alanna started pumping her gift into Numair, trying to calm his racing heart down, but there was no initial success. Daine, with tears running down her face, put his head in her lap and stroked his sweat-matted hair, trying to give him whatever comfort she could. Onua, unsure of what to do for her friend, stood back out of the way and prayed to every god she could think of to make Numair healthy again.

_A cracking noise and suddenly the whole sky was vibrantly lit with a dazzling bolt of pure power. The booming roar of thunder that followed brought Numair out of his daze of wonder and back to reality, and a job that he still has to complete. _I'm not here to observe, _he kept reminding himself over and over again. He closed his eyes and brought his body and senses into a meditative state, and started repeating the spell under his breath multiple times, knowing that if one syllable was off, the consequences could be disastrous. _

Just as quick as they began, the seizures ended and soon every member of the party in the courtyard was panting for breath. Numair had tired his already weak body so much that he slipped into a deep unconscious state. Alanna, pale-faced and exhausted, finally managed to calm Numair's racing and unpredictable heart and bring it to a somewhat steady rhythm. She stood up and helped her husband to his feet, who also looked fatigued and quite bruised. Daine, who still had Numair's head in her lap, never took her tearstained and swollen eyes off her fiancé.

"I don't understand what could have happened," sobbed the Wildmage. "He couldn't have been attacked within the courtyard! Someone surely would have seen something!"

Onua walked over and put a soothing hand on the troubled girl's shoulder. She looked down at the comatose mage and a thought occurred to her. "You know, a huge storm did happen to pass through last night, it almost looks as if he was struck by-"

_Lightning! There it was, the one bolt that might be a turning point for not only him, but the whole palace! Concentrating very hard on getting the timing right, Numair released the spell just as the bolt struck the ground. With a little bit of luck, he said the final words and suddenly the air around him was thicker and he could feel the spell doing its proper job and capturing the wild energy of the lightning. The joy he felt was beyond words as the glowing electricity was extracted and contained. He extended a hand sparkling with black fire and beckoned the electricity to him._

"Struck by lightning? Onua are you crazy? Numair is not a mindless idiot who decides to go on a nice little stroll in the middle of the night while the biggest storm of the season happens to be rolling through!"

Onua just shrugged her shoulders. "You can debate Numair's reasoning as much as you would like Alanna, I'm just telling it like it is. Don't deny the fact that all of his symptoms point towards electric shock, and there just happened to be a whole lot of electricity coming out of the sky last night."

Lost for words, Alanna decided to drop the argument and just think about why Numair would ever want to journey out into a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. _For being such a learned person Numair, you sure are an idiot. _ She checked his body to make sure it was still in working order, and turned towards Daine who still cradled his head in her lab and was staring into space as if under a trance.

"Daine come on, lets go inside, grab something to eat, and we can check on him again later. I would take him into the healers ward, but I'm afraid of what it might do to his condition."

"Alanna why would he do this? Doesn't he know that there are people that care for his well-being and want him to stay safe?"

Unsure of what to say, Alanna gave Daine a sympathetic look and hugged her around the shoulders. "Youngling, you know how Numair gets. Nothing will stop him when he is on a mission for new knowledge! Maybe he was restless and wanted to witness the beauties of nature, or was trying some new arcane experiment. This is all one big mystery, but all we can do is pray and hope that Numair will overcome this and get better."

Daine sniffed and smiled at the Lioness. Tears rolled freely down her face as she gently stood up, trying not to bump Numair's head, and gave Alanna a hand up.

"I think I will take up your offer of food, Numair seems stable and I'm fair starving!"

Alanna draped an arm around Daine's shoulders and lead her towards the palace. "Splendid, splendid. As soon as we are done eating we can come back and check on our lanky mage."

_For some reason, his new electric ball of energy did not seem to want to cooperate. His gift was already quite low from the spell, and now he found that he had to keep pumping more out to try and leash the unruly ball and bring it towards him. With increasingly less patience, Numair finally decided to send one big surge of power out to the orb and he found out to late that it was a big mistake. The magic hit the electricity with tremendous force and obliterated it, sending electric bolts in every direction. Panic turned to terror when Numair found that he didn't have enough Gift left to create a decent shield to protect himself from the new storm that he created himself. _

With a start, Numair's eyes flung open and his heart rate started increasing again. He tried to get control of his limbs, and found it more difficult than he imagined to do so. With as much effort as he could muster, he lifted his head a few inches off the ground and scanned the area for the people who were near him not that long ago. With no sign of them, he sunk back down and started thinking again. No matter how much he stretched his memory back, he just couldn't place why he was in the state he was in. All he remembered was being miserable from the cold, and then a flash of blinding light and unbelievable heat taking over his body.

_Bracing himself for the absolute worst, Numair hunkered down and got as low as possible. He knew he wouldn't have enough time to get back to the palace without being an easy target for a stray bolt to hit him. He had just thought that he was going to make it out unscathed when pure agony hit him with an ungodly force and forced his body into utter chaos. His heart, jolted from the surge of power, fluttered a little and soon plummeted into a faint patter in his chest, and at unexpected times picked back up. His brain, unsure what was happening to the body it was in control of, shut down and Numair slipped into a deep slumber. _

Daine and Alanna had finished their lunch and walked back out into the courtyard to check on Numair. When they got out there, to their surprise, they found him wide awake staring up at the heavens with a strange smile on his face. When he saw them, he first looked frightened, but he then vaguely remembered in the back of his mind that they were friends, and he was going to be okay. The two women smiled at each other, and sat down in the soft grass and looked up at the clouds also. Not a word was spoken, and a feeling of peace and happiness filled them all, despite deep down they all knew that Numair would never be the same again.

It was three months later, and Numair was gradually making progress on his state of health. The electric shock gave him the same effect on his body as a stroke would have, and he lost the ability to use his left hand, and he still hadn't gotten any speaking abilities back yet. His mind worked as strong as ever, and everything else in his body was working the way it should. He still occasionally had times when his heart would start racing, but with a little help from Alanna, he easily got control back. Daine was always there for him, and helped him out in every situation he had trouble with. Unfortunately, none of his friends ever found out what really happened that stormy night, and they knew unless he started speaking, they never would.

It's funny how one night of ambitious knowledge seeking can turn into a lifetime of frustration and pain. Numair found out the hard way that on just one unsuspecting night his life could change all the way around. He knew that he would probably never be as great as he could have been, but that didn't matter. Daine was always there for him, and they eventually did marry and have a family. Jon still had him working, and everything kept going on its normal course, despite the fact that now he was terrified of thunderstorms.

**Ok, so how bad did it suck? The ending, i know, was utterly terrible, but i was in a hurry to post it... Be honest please! i can use a laugh from flame reviews... anyway, at least give me a review and i will be more than happy. cya on the flipside!**

**Sarah**


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